Intuition is a great guide for players in a scenario. Reason and logic are good, useful, solid tools for unlocking puzzles - but a player's intuition, the ability to induce rather than deduce, allows the characters to unlock understanding of what is going on in a story.

An example: The city of Fioracitta. The Adventurers are sitting around a fountain in Piazza Centimani in Carbo District, carousing with soldiers and civilians, when they hear a loud boom in the distance - specifically, Old Town, where the Senate, Parliament, Hall of the Arti, San Tamaggia Temple and government bureaux are housed. A column of smoke rises into the air. They begin to hear the sound of many people screaming. The screams get closer, and louder.

The soldiers, of course, run back to their units and get ready to receive deployment orders. What do the Adventurers do?

Hopefully, your Adventurers' first reactiom should be to jump in and help; and then let their curiosity kick in. After all, it'll be they who solve the mystery and bring a miscreant and saboteur to justice.

The Six Big Questions

Every adventure scenario should have some element of investigation to it. Even if the adventure is not a whodunnit, there must be clues left around for the players to piece together a picture of what exactly is going on.

Activity is what differentiates a mere dungeon crawl from an actual adventure. In a dungeon crawl session, your characters have little to do but to destroy the static, nameless, faceless opposition and carve their way through the ranks until they get to the boss fight - after which, the session ends with little else to do but to divvy up the treasure and hand out the Experience Rolls.

In an adventure, the characters are not faced with static random monsters to fight to the death, an endless Hit Points grindhouse where the monsters and boss level beasts have no other purpose but to stand there and wait for the party to turn up. The adventurers are faced with beings who have something to do, and are often doing their jobs right in front of the player characters.

In an adventure, the player characters might stumble across an orcish kitchen and hear the chef cussing out their subordinates - the adventurers can lend a hand and fetch more vegetables from the pantry, or become part of the meal if they displease the head chef too much.

Out in the corridor, they might see orcs and assorted creatures scurrying along to and from the pantry, carrying heavy sacks. Again, they can try and figure out what it going on - sniffing the raucous riot of clashing spices coming from that noise-filled room at the end of the corridor, and perhaps deducing that it must be chow time for the orc barracks.

It is the adventurers' job to ask loads of questions, if they are to make heads and tails of what is going on all around them.

The questions are: What, Who, Where, When, How, and Why.

To go back to the opening scenario:-

What just exploded? What building was the target? What floor? What room?

Who is injured? Who is missing? Who is dead? Who is responsible?

Where is the source of the detonation? Where are the survivors? Where is the miscreant?

When did they manage to sneak an explosive into the building?

How did the miscreant sneak an explosive device into the building? How did they make their escape?

Why did the miscreant target this building? To what end?

As a Games Master, your job should be to be able to supply those answers to your players' satisfaction at any time. Whether they are asking all the right, mundane, questions, or they are using magic, they have got to know the answers, in order that they can come up with some sort of a cool idea of their own.

Players' Intuition

The best player character tool is their intuition - the characters'. and the players'. The more savvy the players, the better able they will be to come up with a half-decent plan, whatever that plan might be.

Games Masters, if you are running sessions of longer than an hour - I recommend at least two hours, if not three or four - make sure to arrange for pauses in the action, particularly in the runup towards combat scenes. Five minute or ten minute breaks, at least one per hour, and a five minute break at the end of Session Zero, and another one between the last scene and the session or scenario wrap. At least one ten-minute break.

These are, theoretically, for comfort breaks. But most players will likely wander off and huddle in a corner somewhere, or drop into a breakout room, and hatch a plan. This isn't cheating. In fact, it's the opposite. The players will want to plan something. Let them carry out their plan and let them win at it, with a few nailbiting setbacks of course. The objective of the breaks is to give them time to think of something they can do, to achieve the scenario's objective. If they feel they can pull it off, go for it.

Cheating

You might wonder if this is cheating, or that you might be giving the players an undue advantage. It isn't. They are supposed to enjoy the adventure, which means letting them work things out, letting them come up with a plan, and letting them earn their victories. The only time they can truly fail is for them to do nothing.

Even Leeroy Jenkins' doom is better than doing nothing.

You don't have to let them have their own way 100% of the time, mind you. That's why you need to have a few aces up your sleeve, to drop a few surprise roadblocks along their road to victory. The unexpected moments when things did not run smooth will make their victories taste all the sweeeter, and they'll be telling the stories to newbies for years.

Games Master's Intuition

 Players are not the only ones to need intuition. As Games Master, you are responsible for the adventure to run smooth, even if the  players' perception of the adventure is the opposite.

Remember, you can also ask the Big Six Questions at any time, such as:- What would be the worst thing to happen to the adventurers right now? Who would be the least welcome non-player character to drop in on the characters unannounced (pick a Rival or bitter Enemy) Where are their exits? When would be a good time to drop in inconvenient reinforcements? How can the bad guy escape from a hail of arrows touched by Bypass Armour? Why is there a need to have the boss monster just stand there, when they can use their superior knowledge of nhe ins and outs of this place to set up traps to incapacitate the adventurers?

How can I bring this battle scene to a swift close? What can I do to incapacitate them rather than kill them?

As Games Master, you need your intuition to help you make the best decisions at any given time to keep the narrative and immersion going smoothly, even if all your plans and theirs just fell to bits through a few lousy die rolls on both sides. You must be able to go from Plan A to winging it, in such a way that the players can never see the join.

Conclusion

Both the players and the Games Master must make good friends with intuition - the players, to figure out what's happening and to work out plans; and the Games Master, to make decisions intended to keep the game running smoothly and remain entertaining for both the players and themselves as Games Masters.

Don't be afraid to let the players work out plans and not include you. See, the thing is, if they're coming up with a scheme, whether it's whip-smart or dumb as rocks ... they are doing most of the heavy work for you. If they have a plan, be prepared to ditch yours in favour of theirs, because they will be entertaining themselves - and you.

And who can find fault in that?